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Plaxo Pulse and Facebook

Byrichard

For all of those privacy advocates I’m on your side for this issue. With a lot of communitis you create a profile and friends can see it. What you give them are both your name and possibly phone number but no more. When you’re building a database of contacts you must ask for it.

When you add friends to outlook, address and other applications you’ve done research and the users have given their consent. That’s not the same as harvesting them direct from facebook. No one said they wanted you to have their e-mail address. No one chose to give you those details.

If you want them ask for them. Taking contact details from 5000 people is unethical and wrong. That’s very similar to spam behaviour.

What makes this worse is that Plaxo is associated with this. I use Plaxo pulse and you can see it on the right side of this column.  I don’t mind their services but for people to harvest their friend’s data without prior consent will help increase this feeling of insecurity.

We’ve had that debate on Seesmic, on Facebook and other online communities. If we want real communities transparency and trust are key. Stop abusing it.

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The Social Media

Byrichard

Forget the term new media, it’s passed, it’s gone. Today’s key word is social media. What this term means is the following. Any medium that encourages conversations via new technologies, whether twitter, blogs and podcasts or forums is a social media.

It is the idea that authority has disappeared. Rather than be talked to by the content producers a dialogue is formed. Liana Lehua of Girls gone geek.tv for example started following me just as I was listening to her talk on another podcast than your own.

There is no need for the tabloid press to tell us what the “rockstars” are doing, rather they tell us themselves. Look at Leo Laporte’s blog. Look at Documentally’s two websites. Look at Loudmouthman, Jeff Pulver and others. These people all create content for us to enjoy.

Each of these people is taking advantage of the social media to create a profile for their activities both as podcasts and textual content. Those who are new to the media, who have yet to create a name for themselves have a great opportunity. If you’re a sociable individual then take some time to learn about the social media movement and participate.

Participation is a key concept. We are all publishers, we all have a website. We have moo cards and they’re social media bookmarks. They’re just a quick way of sharing contact information. As soon as we get to our computers we add those we meet and keep up to date with what we’re doing. It creates a great sense of unity.

They’re also taking advantage of the new social media landscape. It’s a shame that most people are limited to zombie biting, vampires and other wastes of time rather than sharing their creative output. I wish more people would write about what’s important to them and share it via twitter, blogs and of course aggregate the content according to the various social media tools like Plaxo Pulse, Lijit and Tumblr.

This is a call for more people to take proper advantage of the current social media trends and participate more actively. Don’t just join a social network and post photographs. Write and produce content as well.